A Temple Street eatery that has spent the past six years training refugee and immigrant women to become chefs while also serving some of the best falafel in town will close on Friday. Havenly Co-Executive Directors Caterina Passoni and Denisse Cruz-Contreras made that announcement in an email on Thursday. “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of the Havenly Cafe at 25 Temple Street, effective July 17, 2026,” that email states. “This was an incredibly difficult decision. While the cafe has been a special place for gathering, learning, and community, it has become unsustainable to operate both a cafe and a nonprofit job training program.” The cafe’s coming closures does not spell the end of Havenly as a job-training program for refugees, however. “While this marks the end of an important chapter, we have a comprehensive plan. Every one of our current programs (Fellowship Program, Childcare Incubator, Apprenticeship Program, Savings Cooperative, and Alumnae Assembly) are still running, and 100% of our current participants will continue receiving the support and services they rely on.” Havenly’s cafe at 25 Temple St. opened in 2020, in one of the ground-floor retail spaces at the Temple Street Garage — right across the street from the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas movie theater, which closed in 2023. “Unfortunately, the cafe was no longer sustainable for us from a financial and a logistics perspective,” Passoni said in a Thursday phone interview. “We had to make a decision to close it.” Passoni said that a number of factors contributed to the cafe’s financial challenges. “It’s definitely a hard block to have a business on,” she said about this stretch of Temple. “We’ve had a very loyal customer base that has been willing to come to the block,” even when they’re not just walking by. “We’ve also had a lot of safety concerns given the population we work with.” Havenly works primarily with immigrant and refugee women from the Middle East, including Syria. Also, “it’s been really hard since the new administration” — that is, since President Donald Trump returned to power in Washington, D.C. “We’ve lost a lot of federal funding.” “In general, things have been very difficult financially.” “As part of this transition, Fellowship participants will complete a three-month externship with local employers instead of undergoing kitchen training in the Havenly Cafe,” Havenly’s email announcement on Thursday states. “This change will give each participant the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a field that aligns with their personal career goals before graduating from the program.” Passoni told the Independent that, indeed, the women Havenly works with will train “directly with employers” — like at the dining hall at The Towers. Passoni said that Havenly is also working with Fair Haven Community Health Care to train future community health workers, and it’s also planning on opening a childcare hub at 495 Blake St. in Westville. Unfortunately, Passoni said, customers hungry for more Havenly falafel and baklava will not be able to buy their food anywhere after the cafe closes on Friday. “To every customer who shared a meal with us, every donor who believed in our mission, every volunteer who gave their time, every partner who stood alongside us, and every staff member and graduate who made Havenly what it is today, thank you,” Thursday’s email states. “Because of your support, the cafe became so much more than a place to eat. It became a place where refugee and immigrant women built confidence, developed new skills, found community, and took meaningful steps toward economic independence. Your belief in Havenly has changed lives, and that impact will continue long after our cafe doors close.” The post Havenly To Close Temple Cafe appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less